Wednesday, August 27, 2008

View from here ....

I feel thoroughly put down and bested by the I-Can-Do-Anything-You-Can Do-Better barrage. I'm so not good at debate. It shoots me right back into my childhood and my father and brother ganging up to belittle me and make me unnerved by calling me "emotional." 

All I wanted to say was don't blame the victim in the Cider Press thing -- and sure, she should have been more careful early on, but hey, does this mean no competitions are legitimate? Yeah, they cost money (so do a good many of the "open" submissions -- and there are fewer and fewer of them, even so), but when people pay $4 for a Starbucks, is a $20 fee for a book contest so awful? I don't buy Starbucks and I brown-bag my lunch. So I enter some competitions -- not every damn one, but some.

All I said is self publishing smacks of desperation -- to me, for me. Yeah, a lot of crap gets published every which way, no argument there.

I'd like to publish a magazine, maybe, someday. But right now I spend my day working and driving to work. There's not a lot of time left for being human, let alone writing. That said, I'd better get back to my work.

4 comments:

Leslie said...

Hi Diane,
I haven't commented on all of it beyond a genuine sympathy for the author because I hate the way some people co-op someone's heartbreak to beat their own drums about the evils of big publishing/contests/the po-biz.

I'm with you.

Unknown said...

Thanks for your solidarity.

Unknown said...

Good post. I do suspect that in the future, we will see an ever greater movement toward "self-publication," and a lessening of whatever stigma might be associated with it. The technology is so widely available and the opportunities for publication with more traditional presses (though growing) are not keeping up with number of writers who want--and frankly, deserve--to be published.

Unknown said...

Solutions are needed, that's for sure. I don't have all the answers -- or any, actually. I'd like to see publishers publish more poetry. There are so many poets out there wanting to be published, you'd think there would be a bigger commercial audience, wouldn't you?